and just like that
Good morning!
I'm writing to you in the hours of anticipation before I meet my sweetheart off the boat. Let's pause on that sentiment because, really, there is no better way to greet someone you love. To stand on the dock, wind in one's hair, scanning the horizon for that first glimpse of the Elizabeth Ann making its way across the ocean. And then, to see your beloved at the bough, both of you waving, waving, waving until the boat is tied off, and he comes ashore into your wide open arms. Aaahhh.
There’s just something about islands…
Over the past nineteen years, I've been privy to some epic arrivals and departures. Families reunited. Lovers holding one another, lingering over a last kiss, not knowing if they would see each other ever again. I used to feel a similar anxiousness around our departures from Monhegan about leaving the island itself. What if I never found my way back?
It's island tradition to gather a bouquet of wildflowers before boarding the boat, then cast their stems into the harbor as a promise someday you will return. I've kept that vow. Every summer. Year after year, after nineteen years.
Later this afternoon, John and I will finish cleaning the cottage, readying it for renters. We’ll leave some things in my locked storage closet, and compile lists of what needs to be replenished for our return in two weeks. Garbage bags, White balsamic vinegar, paint for the bathroom floor. All are rituals with which I am familiar.
This week in Noted,
shared pages from the sacred diaries of Ghandi and his wife. I found myself taken by the simplicity of Kasturba's words, each day beginning: prayers, morning rituals.Such a gorgeous daily reminder. Simply to rewrite those words is evocative, affirming the many ways we call ourselves to greet the day. We don't need to share our practice in detail; we only need to commit to practice.
I've likened my time on island to my time in India as both are acts of pilgrimage. What follows is stream-of-conscious something I wrote on Instagram in 2017:
It seems impossible to believe, but the connection and energy I feel between my time on Monhegan and my experiences in India are uncanny. Begin at the beginning that one does not find oneself at either geolocation by happenstance. They are places guided by planning and intention. The surface similarities can be as mundane as learning to live with limited electricity; purchasing water to drink; the traffic pattern is dictated by the largest vehicle on the road; traveling by foot; an obsession with trash. Stripped to the bone, Monhegan and India become intertwined in my heart: to be present only to presence, being, and becoming magically one.
Of course, this June has not been a month of dusty roads but one of puddles and fog. I haven't seen Manana, the tiny sheltering island across the harbor, in days. Still, there have been plenty of brilliant, bright light moments when even the gloom has been aglow.
I've spent this past month writing and walking. Reading and leaning into lines. I've committed myself to Jami Attenberg’s #1000wordsofsummer every day in many forms. I've outlined a collection, transcribed so many (too many) notes from my notes app, and begun to keep a secondary notebook. It's become an understanding and an accepting of how I write with kindness, and hopefully an approach and a rhythm to be the momentum for more at home in another writing space entirely—sew many strands to be tugged and traced.
Virginia Woolf is considered a constant diarist, recording her daily life as material and more. However, there were periods of pause, of not writing, and then of finding herself on the page again. One of these times was on August 3, 1917, when she wrote in her journal for the first time in two years. Woolf's forgotten diary became
a bridge between two periods in her work and also between illness and health, writing and not writing, looking and feeling. Unpacking each entry, we can see the richness of her daily life, the quiet repetition of her activities and pleasures. There is no shortage of drama: a puncture to her bicycle, a biting dog, the question of whether there will be enough sugar for jam. She rarely uses the unruly "I," although occasionally, we glimpse her planting a bulb or leaving her mackintosh in a hedge. Mostly she records things she can see or hear or touch. "Happiness is," she writes later, in 1925, "to have a little string onto which things will attach themselves."
Over the past month, I've tried to accomplish the same. To notice what is carrying me forward and what carries me away. To build a string bridge, stretching between one life on island and another in shore, all the while knowing they are both still me.
I'm so excited to share all I have gathered on retreat this September. There's still a little space left. If you're interested in knowing more, drop me a line. I'd love to meet you at the boat.
Thanks for reading!
When Women Were Birds: murmuration, memoir, meditation
September 22 - 26, 2023
Monhegan, ME
word by word, the language of women so often begins with a whisper… . .
if you have ever wished to experience Monhegan for yourself, this is your invitation! this retreat is an embodied book group: to journey and journal through the words of Terry Tempest Williams's poetic memoir When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice with the seasons of the sea. it is for anyone who longs to learn or return to the practices of writing and meditation, to discover our stories through silence and speech. all the details • 2022 retreat highlights here
I felt like the bright, salty sunshine and air of Monhegan scrubbed the corners of my soul, and I saw all the cracks and creases and also cleaned the gunk that needed to be moved. It was a deeply satisfying and nourishing experience. I feel like my personal bucket as a woman, mom, midwife, and human became filled to the brim with trust that we can have hard times and find meaningful ways to re-visit reintegrate into ourselves when the opportunity presents itself—Elsa, Philadelphia, PA, 2021 + 2022 retreater
one of the best ways to support and sustain my work is through the act of sharing. if you know somebody who would enjoy this newsletter or the experience of being on retreat
oh! i’ve also been fiddling around with Substack Notes, and would love for you to join me there! in between my newsletters, i’m using it as shorthand space to share ~
i hope you will join the conversation!
as always, you may share, restock/crosspost on social media, follow me on IG, leave a comment, or send me a message privately.
Beautiful words that gave me so much to think about. Thank you!
i know it sounds absurd...yet both speak to my heart like no other 💛 and that sunset was spectacular and one of only TWO I saw in the entire month 😂😂